1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for debiting therefore for costs of automatic fuelling, of a vehicle where the driver does not have to leave the vehicle for paying the filled fuel.
2. Decription of the Related Art
Automatic fuelling of vehicles is known, among others from the Swedish patents 8403564-1 and 9002493-6, that show solutions where the position of the filling point of the vehicle is automatically measured by means of microwave technology, in that a fuelling robot senses the position of a position giving transponder assembled for the purpose close to the filling point of the vehicle. In this way a comfortable, safe and fast filling of fuel is obtained, without the driver having to step out of the vehicle.
Since usually a payment/debiting is related to the filling of fuel, it is also desirable to find solutions allowing that the payment operation itself does not require leaving the vehicle, since otherwise a big part of the advantages with automatic fuelling would be lost.
Hereby information about account, fuel quality etc can be stored in a transponder on the vehicle, for example in the transponder unit that is used for measuring of the filling point position. Thereby the cost for a special data carrier and reader for the debiting is avoided, since common system components are used for the position measurement as well as for the debiting.
An aim with the present invention is to enable automatic debiting during automatic fuelling of vehicles and without the driver having to step out of the vehicle, and where the total cost of the system has been minimized.
A second aim with the invention is to solve the theft demand problems for a transponder on a vehicle that may occur when using debiting functions in the transponder.
A third aim of the invention is to provide a solution that allows an accurate measurement of the position of the transponder as well as that the transponder is communicated with data.
A fourth aim of the invention is to enable an off-line function, i.e. that the system shall not have to call data central to match the data code of the transponder with a personal code related to the driver of the vehicle and/or the fuelling place.
A fifth aim of the invention is to enable also the debiting in to be carried out off-line, i e without having to call a data central.
A sixth aim of the invention is to enable updating and reading of the transponder both at the fuelling robot and at other places in a way which is acceptable from a security point of view.